


Bet you wanna rip my heart out, Bet you wanna skip my calls now. Well, guess what? I like that

by orphan_account



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: And end up sleeping together, Cracked out Boris, M/M, So many typos omg I can't proofread at all literally, The boys try to count stars???, Theo is just bitchy, also Theo is confused, for some reason I made it sound like Boris ballerina dances, my love Xandra is mentioned like twice, so is Pippa, teenage Boreo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:22:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22428532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It wasn't until Theo was choking on Nevada sand and blinded by black curls did he realize that He had another fount of succor right under his paper-white hands.
Relationships: Boris Pavlikovsky & Theodore Decker, Boris Pavlikovsky/Theodore Decker, Theodore Decker & Boris Pavlikovsky, Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 1
Kudos: 52





	Bet you wanna rip my heart out, Bet you wanna skip my calls now. Well, guess what? I like that

**Author's Note:**

> title is a loveless by Lorde.

Boris was engrossed in the movie, his profile Sharp. "Wonder how many stars are in the sky," He asked, then: "Light me a cigarette."  
I did so, my fingers bumping his bony elbow. "Lots. I can't even imagine how many." Boris had been staring out the window of my Living room, lips parted in thought. His profile was sharp, every bolt and hollow of his neck visible in the husky glow.  
"Do you want to count with me?" Scratching his tangled hair, obviously fucked up.  
I blinked; Mostly because I had been knocked into preparing for the upcoming shuddering bliss of a high to understand what he said, but soon gathered how stupid he was for asking such a thing.  
"What?" Dumbly, I put my chin on a couch pillow and blinked. My dad had some left over peppermints from a Strip Restaurant Strewn on the table. I wanted one, but the weight on my numb and fizzing tongue would be too much at this hour.  
Itching at a spot on his neck: "Count, ya know, one, two, three," He stared up at the sky through the window.  
"You aren't serious," I said. I knocked him on the elbow with bruised knuckles.  
He blew his cigarettes smoke in my face before stubbing it out on the coffee table. Clammy hands on my pale arms, he was shoving me off the couch and trying to maneuver me outside, past the glass door.  
Outside now; my hands on his silver jacket. I was laughing, despite there being nothing humorous happening. Just Boris with his cold fingers Pinching at my arms, thighs, waist, getting me past the glass door into Nevada desert. When he did, He nicked me once on the shin with his desert boots before sitting on the hard ground, dragging his hand back and forth. His Sid Vicious bracelets put trails in the sand.  
With sand already creeping into my shoes, I kicked them off and sat with him on the dirt. His face was contorted, as if he'd grabbed a lime from Xandra's margarita and sucked it. His eyes were trained on the sky, more specifically the yellow stars. I cleared my throat to grab his attention, something I did little too often with him. Stealing him from his moments that we're for himself, breaking whatever peace he held for those seconds. Nonetheless, he turned to me and scratched his head.  
"You really want to?" I asked. The stars were, in a literal sense, uncountable. So many blazed, at least a thousand reflected in Boris's gray Iris.  
Then; "Do you think your dad is in trouble?" He threw sand on my lap, which I dusted away quickly, dazed my his question. I didn't have a problem with Boris's intrigue with my father; He had stolen my spot as the son and I let him, though it never failed to irritate me when Boris would bring him up. When alone with just the two of us, the idyllic flow would be cut by the hard edge of Boris's Voice; "Your father, says that one thing, about luck? Brilliant phrase. Must remember it." Even seeing him in my father's hand-me-downs brought a tinge of raw odium to my ears. So, in that moment, the Idea of talking about my father had upset me.  
"What? Why would he be in trouble?" I downplayed his question best I could, trying to speak moreso with my tone than words. _Let's not talk about this. Back to the stars, maybe? I'll help count._  
Boris held out his palms, cigarettes caught between his index and middle finger. Ash floated onto his black jeans, the orange glow a star in the black around us. "Is angrier, yelling more. At the Television, on the phone, even at Xandra."  
I rolled my eyes. "Your dad yells all the time when I stay over. What's so different?"

Boris made an irritated noise, stirred up. "Is different! I say, watch out is all. Do not make him angry at _you._ " Laying down, his hair a shadow across the bare ground.

I fumbled around beside him, Grasping at loose ends in my mind. Had my father been angry lately? I couldn't tell, when Boris wasn't over I was at his house, or chewing on cornflakes after a self-induced headache from listening to _Giacomo Puccini_ on my iPod tuned to the highest volume. Xandra had been ill in the mood lately, but I just assumed it had been the masquitos she insisted I was letting inside the house.  
Boris, the North Star in the black of my sky, my wave of color against my monochrome Television static, turned to me. My insides had gone watery, my mind swaying back and forth to the old CD tracks stuck in my head. I couldn't remember if I was asleep or not, if I had shut my eyes and meandered in a stream of new absences, ones that were the taste of Pippa and her morphine lollipop, ones that were the sound of my father's voice scolding me for leaving the tub of ice cream out, ones that were the feeling of Boris's hands caught between my hair teasingly. I had grown empty, the taste of bubbling bong water and Boris's cheap shampoo the most prominent in my mouth as I bopped to and from sentience. Still, Boris was turned to me, his lips moving yet no black voice being heard. It didn't matter if I was In a fever dream or not, he was expecting me to respond somehow, or definitely listen. But his words had fallen deaf, non-existent in my own world, built of mapped hiding places behind my dim view and a familiar throw of dust and blood on museum pillars.  
I swallowed, my throat it's own crushed museum, the words I want to speak crumbling down like the cities of Pompeii, So brittle and dusted over by the things I couldn't say. Buried and gone, But I kept on staring, dry-mouthed at my friend who spoke in English riddles despite barely Being able to pronouncing _Magazine_ correctly.  
Shifting to get comfortable on the hard ground, I speak. "What is it?"  
Boris laughs. White fingertips curving over the bend of my arm, an answer within itself. "Was counting. Thought I was joking, yes?"  
I turn away and adjust my wonky glasses, upset with how Boris watched my movements. (He did this often, making me loathe the fact that I had to wear such things.) "You weren't kidding?"

He shook his head, "No, was counting, _ten, eleven, twelve_ " counting on his fingers lazily. I laugh, but he continues. "You were quiet, thought you had gone to sleep! But no, you in your thoughts again."  
I ignored his strangely subdued tone at the last sentence, rubbing my eyes bleakly. "You were counting? How do you keep up with what you've counted and what you haven't?"

A sly smile; "I had to start over sometimes. Is really calming, like counting sheep. Only harder." Boris shrugged.  
"I am not counting with you." I said blandly. Boris; "sleepy already? Is only past six, your mom hasn't even left for her shift at the strip!"

I sent him a look, pinching the underside of his arm. "Fuck off, Xandra is _not_ my mom."  
He smoothed his jacket, his smile stygian under the shadow of his hair.  
"I know, was only playing. But really, do you want to go inside? I do believe _Nasferatu_ is still playing. " He Slapped his forgead with a pink hand, "Forgot to remove the disc."

I idea of a movie brought a feeling of sick over me. How we spent most of our nights, chewing cinnamon gum for dinner and drinking vigorously before going to sleep, always drove me deeper into dependence. Not so much on the alcohol (Though I sure I was a budding alcoholic, nontheless an actual blow addict), but moreso on the need to be with someone, or something, who wasn't the boreing dread of my mother's death. Being with Boris was as much a drug as the stuff we swallowed, Enough to put me out cold if he said the right thing. (Though I don't fully remember, I believe I cried once when He had inquired about our civics lesson about the Constitution. Hearing him ask me something that was so unimportant and fey was something I cherished. Though, of course, I would never had done such a thing sober.)

"Let's go inside." Boris spat, strangely distant. He had a habit of being Ill-tempered when drunk, I'd woken up with a wine-colored eye or pouty lip due to a few quarrels the past night. But this night he was irritated because of me surely, over some fucked _stars._  
"But the stars-" He slapped my hand. Playful, yet painfully similar to what my father did when I was too loud when game he was betting on was playing. Xandra would shrug when she saw me retract, almost apologetic but at the same time more Caring about her leftovers from the Strip, which she stood over and scarfed down.  
"Bah," -waving his hand dismissively-,"too many. Got to twenty and got bored. Very pretty though, almost as nice as the nights I spent in Sweden."  
I rubbed my face. "I forget how many places you've been."  
"Sky was covered by Mountains mostly, but the lakes were pretty. My father once taught me had to skip rocks, Though now I have forgotten how."

To fill my silent response, Boris hummed a song he'd heard play often on the Motorola. (He wasn't bothered to learn the name until he was later putting it on a CD mix for Kotku, which had oddly irked me.) I eventually stood and circled my way past the Paned sliding door.

"Have you eaten yet?" I said. We had skipped school today, due to angry hangovers that left me leaning sick over Boris's grimy tub and wrapped in sopping shower curtains, so missing school lunch bit me hard later than evening, and not even a chilled glass of Brandy could deaden my gnawing appetite.  
Shaking his head,"No, though I am not really hungry." Said Boris. He was still scrounging through my fridge, a habit he'd picked up, one Xandra didn't appreciate. "Are you? Hungry, I mean?"

"No," I lied. Boris moved hair from his face, slamming the fridge door shut and rubbing his eyes. He started popping the _Nasferatu_ disc out of the DVD player, blowing dust off with a warm breath. I watched, waiting for him to get back to painting our night, like he usually did. Rarely would I put in my suggestions, being so young and very much a follower (I would have followed Boris anywhere he wanted to take me. Even now, nearly a decade later, I still would.) He'd suggest anything, want to see who could jump off the swings the farthest?, and I'd do it, sleeping with a sprained ankle but the memory of Boris's slurred and obnoxious laughter was enough for me to say, Yes, of course! if he asked me to do it again. Because, after all, he created our own little world, our little dreams. We did the crazy and stupid and the fruitless and the apathetic, because we revolved around each other, and that's all that really matters to a couple of dirty teenage boys, isn't it? We lived off of the buzz we got from each other, and that was something I chased boundlessly at that age. So, yes, if Boris suggested something or planned a night, I followed him blindly into that minature escape. Or maybe he himself was one, an diminutive nirvana in a life of peruny. Maybe I would have realized this sooner, if I hadn't been so desperate to find a safe place from myself at such a young age. Now I regret it, but I cannot blame my past self for grazing over the fruit of my pleasure, the hearth. I was in a sense blinded by the wrong thing.  
So, Then I sat, staring at nothing while Boris slowly put away the CD. I came to when he clapped his hands from his position near the couch, blinking. He had said something while I daydreamed.  
When I didn't respond; "I believe Xandra has left already." He said.  
"Really?" I asked. I was sure i'd heard her snoozing in the master bedroom not too long ago, though I didn't have enough courage to enter and check, ever.  
" _Ja_ , No car." He motioned toward the empty driveway. Her absence put a fluttering weight off my shoulders.  
I began to walk upstairs, avoiding the riot of bet papers strewn about, severely disturbed when I had seen one page had the word _forfeit_ scribbled in my fathers crude handwriting. Boris followed wordlessly, twirling around the maze of pages as if he were a musical pink coryphee.  
With just as much poise, he doubled past me, his foot gently grazing the cuff of my pants. He had done it on purpose; I knew this because he turned back to look at me, a sequined smile that spoke so many unspoken words. It was a small sign. It wasn't intended to start a quarrel, like such a thing usually did. Actually, just the accidental too-rough shove would end with me in his lap, struggling to get out of his grasp before he wrapped his wiry fingers around my throat again. Instead, this gesture was a intimate. A small, _I'm here, you know,_ that he thought i needed. So when he gazed back at me, his black hair silvery thin in the virginal light that flowed from the open bathroom ahead of us, my glass-spun heart splintered.  
I smiled back, my tranquility busted by my devilish friend. My spindly golden high that brought me to my bedroom and bequiled me to my bed ended sharply when Boris was atop me, his curls now tickling my forehead and his fingers creating knots in the dips of my arms. I didn't push him off, it was not like he was doing anything. He stared down at me, as if I were a new fascination to him. The tips of his fingers dug deeper and deeper into my skin as he admired, and as I admired back, the pain bruising enough for me to pull back and gasp. He followed my movements, adjusting his hands, his knee prodding my lower thigh and his chest rose and fell as he breathed with mine. I swallowed before I spoke.  
"Are you tired?" I said dumbly. He moved his hand to a different spot on my forearm and I sighed again.  
"Sort of." He said. My eyes rolled back in exhilaration. Was I tired myself? My eyes burned and my jaws were slack due to the Rohypnol tablets my dad had left out on the coffee table (I believed my father had fine sleeping habits, so he must have acquired such a strong drug without prescriptions), and the _Blue Moons_ that a bystander had bought for me and Boris that weekend had made my limbs go blank. My earlier restlessness was watered down and nearly flushed. So, I rested limp under Boris until he spoke again; "I suppose you are too?"  
I nod. "A little."  
He climbed off me, laying to my right--Despite his abnormally skinny frame, he still hung off the bed due to my position. He stayed that way all night, even though the bedside table edge poked at his spine irritably every time he moved--and wrapped around me. This wasn't a normal thing, nor was it weird. We usually slept spine to spine, only rarely did we sleep like this: Wrapped limbs, His fingers caught in my hair, his own hair in my mouth and Blinding me. His fingers found their place on the divots of my ribs, feeling them through my shirt. Lips grazed my neck, chilling my already aching bones and exploding my insides into flames.  
I couldn't remember when I fell asleep, or if I even did that night. I do, however, remember the way Boris managed to break my heart and Fix it back in seconds, and he was the _only_ person that could ever have that affect on me.


End file.
